I know more about how the GOP works. Know what, though? I am a committeeman, and it’s all still pretty vague to me. Here’s an e-mail I just sent to the head of the Chester County GOP to get a handle on how best to send real uncommitted delegates to the national GOP convention. It distills down my understanding of the system as it stands right now. As I learn more, so will you! Funny how the process of how we elect the president of a free nation needs distilling.

Skip:

I seem to recall we nominated you as a delegate last week. Who did we nominate along with you?

The reason for my question is I am really unhappy with the way the presidential primary system in our country works. I tried talking to my state legislators about moving ours up so our votes could be meaningful, but that was like beating my head against a wall. [see post tags for list of who I tried to persuade on the matter]

Besides, I eventually came to the conclusion that simply moving ours forward is not so much a solution, as it makes a dysfunctional system worse. It occurred to me, though, one way to at least draw attention to the issue would be to have Pennsylvania’s delegation to the GOP convention not only arrive uncommitted in theory, but in actual practice as well.

This is an idea already floated by former Senator Santorum, and I feel it is something on which we should follow up, even if there’s no real chance any more of our national convention being “brokered”.

What are your thoughts on this?

PA GOP delegates, you see, are technically sent as uncommitted. The helpful op-ed from Rick Santorum I mention can be found here. This is apparently not how it goes down in practice, though, and I need to learn more about how and why. Skip, though, seems like a decent and rational fellow, and he is one of the two people the Chester County GOP has nominated to be delegates at the national convention. I’m sure he can explain it to me, and could perhaps also be persuaded to join the cause.

This is no time for nihilism or defeatism. As this blog will spend a fair amount of time bashing all the candidates currently running for President, I should make this clear: The country has muddled through worse, and all the current candidates have something to recommend them.

The problem is, on the GOP side supporters of allof the original five or so original candidates had the suspicion that we could have done better. As for the Dems, I suggest if the Clinton machine does in Obama you will see an eruption the American Right is unable to muster.

The first step I think we need to take to begin solving this problem is changing our Byzantine and financially ruinous primary scheme. The best thing we can do now, it seems to me, is to encourage all remaining primary voters to find a way to select “uncommitted” or “none of the above” on their presidential primary ballots.

Rich Lowry of National Review presents one reason why our primary system is incoherent on NRO’s Corner blog:

“Has this ever happened before? This is kind of amazing. I’m looking at CNN exit polls at the numbers for self-identified Republicans. McCain lost self-identified Republicans by a point in New Hampshire (oddly, he won registered Republicans); he lost self-identified Republicans by 14 points in Michigan; and he tied among self-identified Republicans in South Carolina and Florida. In other words, McCain is close to the presumptive nominee GOP nominee without having won self-identified Republican voters anywhere. What an extraordinary—and utterly unlikely—path to the nomination. Presumably, with his front-runner status enhanced, McCain will now begin to win self-identified Republicans, but he has pulled the political equivalent of an inside-straight to get here.”

That’s right: The presumptive GOP nominee has yet to have a convincing win in a GOP primary dominated by Republicans.

His last remaining real challenger wouldn’t even be able to stay in the race, either, if he didn’t have millions of dollars on which he never paid income taxes. Of course, he paid capital gains taxes. Nice work if you can get it…

Welcome to PA For Uncommitted Delegates. This blog’s purpose is to encourage Pennsylvania’s delegates to the national party conventions to remain uncommitted, and if the choice of the nominee is fait accompli, to abstain in protest of the insane and anti-democratic way we select the President of the United States.

This blog was born out of Mayor Giuliani’s abortive run at the Presidency. If you are interested for historical reasons in my meager place in that endeavor, go visit PA for Hizzoner, which briefly attained notice.

My interest in Giuliani’s candidacy led me to what seems to me what Newt would call an “80% issue”. This is an issue that virtually everyone can agree on that politicians would be wise to “stand next to and smile.”

For me, that issue is our asinine primary system, which we will discuss at some length here.

Perhaps more controversially, I am animated by how our major political parties seem to internally select candidates their broader constituencies find lacking.

[NOTE: This post was updated after the fact to hopefully adjust the description displayed on major search engines.]

There were some Mitt folks at the Chester County GOP endorsement meeting last night. Some McCain folks as well.

Alas, there were no Rudy people.

I guess every single person on the campaign is currently getting a sunburned face in the Sunshine State. Many polls have Hizzoner slipping there, but some still have him strong, including a recent Rassmussen poll.

Also, early voting is huge in FL, not just for folks that are out of town, but for folks for whom a trip to a polling place is something of a chore. When most of those votes were cast Hizzoner had a dominating lead in the polls. Current polling does not take this into account. Conventional wisdom seems to be that Rudy is in trouble. It would be dishonest to say that is entirely untrue, but this pundit thinks that is an underestimation.

I chatted last night with my retiring State Rep. Carol Rubley. She remembered I cared about moving up the primary, and pointed out that ours might matter after all. I pointed out that this presidential race is as competitive as it gets, and the liklihood of our primary mattering is still miniscule.

As an aside, please feel free to e-mail me if you have any interest in supporting Guy Ciarrocchi [no web site yet] as he runs for her seat, or Admiral Steve Kantrowitz as he takes on Andy Dinniman. Rubley and Dinniman, by the way, were both people with fairly casual views about how important it is for you to cast a presidential primary vote that matters.